A little about myself...

I am a writer and producer for the Channel 4 News website. I began my career as a radio reporter, then moved to Independent Radio News as a bulletin reader and later news editor. I moved into online journalism in 2008 when I took over as head of news at ITN Productions. I have been at C4N since 2009. I am also a music writer for the Spectator Arts Blog.

My likes...

Like many news junkies, I am a Twitterholic. The fact that Twitter can often be wrong is not a problem; in fact the cock-ups are part of the appeal. We all hate polished marketing speak, don't we? So it follows that we all like the sense of "real" that Twitter provides, even if it exposes Jon Snow's spelling mistakes. I like the democracy of Twitter and the fact non-celebs sometimes have a louder voice than society's supposed leaders. Elsewhere I am still a big fan of Last.FM, even though it's one of the old guard now. It has led me to some amazing music - the digital version of your mate's big brother's mixtape.

My dislikes...

I'm not keen on tweeting for tweet's sake. If you don't have anything to say, don't! There is a lot of pressure for people to be "seen" engaging on social platforms. Don't force it!

Any Social Media tips...

In a newsroom environment, don't try to force correspondents to "do social media"... just show them how others are using Twitter, Facebook et al to get stories, interviewees & higher profiles - they'll soon follow! Storyful.com is great for monitoring foreign news. GoogleMaps are a gift to news websites, if used smartly: http://www.channel4.com/news/japan-earthquake-and-tsunami-interactive-video-t... , @faisalislam is the man to watch as the eurozone train crash continues.

Any Social Media predictions...

Social media as "archive tool". I want the capacity to see who was tweeting about what, on this day last year... and the year before.... in a particular place. I want to search tools & filters. Facebook's timeline appears to be a step towards this. But why not apply it on a grand scale?

Friday, 18 November 2011

This week Google has taken Google Music out of Beta and made it available to all. Google want Google Music to help people spend more time listening to their collection and less time managing it. They have fully integrated it with the Android Market and offers more than 13 million tracks from artists on Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and EMI. Unfortunately Google Music is only available in the United Staes at the moment.

PayPal has launched a Facebook application designed to let users of the social networking site send money to each other. Facebook users can now send money to their friends and family, whether it’s for a special occasion like a birthday or anniversary or just because along with an e-card, photos, videos and a message. With just a few clicks and a PayPal account money can be sent.

Facebook this week rolled out two new changes to their photo uploads and Events. Now, when you upload photos to an album, you can see each photo as it uploads and watch the upload progress in real-time. The Events feature update involves several key changes — including a Bing-generated map that allows viewers to get directions to the venue, grouping all response actions in one place on the page, and removing the emphasis from the “Not Attending”.

After dozens of spoof and fake accounts, Simon Cowell finally gave in and joined the social networking site Twitter, with the words: 'It's official, I know it's taken a while. It's really me! We're live in 10 minutes. I'll keep you posted. Lots of love #iamsimon'. Cowell had described the adoption of social media as a means of voting as "fantastic", saying that it offered the X Factor's audience "more and more choice".

Thursday, 17 November 2011

You may have noticed recently that your Facebook newsfeed has taken a turn for the worse, a 'Self-Inflicted Javascript injection' was the cause; what this means is that when you click on a link posted in your newsfeed, a piece of code worms its way into your profile and likes some truly shocking links. A piece of code similar to this, was responsible for previous Facebook attacks, including, “Hey are you still there?,” “You look so stupid in this video,” and various scams related to the death of Osama Bin Laden.

The images, which included hardcore pornography, extreme violence, animal abuse and even photoshopped images of Justin Bieber in a risky situation were visible to your friends, but not yourself. Facebook rep Andrew Noyes told Mashable, "We have recently experienced an increase in reports and we are investigating and addressing the issue".

No one has stepped up as of yet to take responsibility for the attack, although a lot of fingers are being pointed at Anonymous, who threatened to attack Facebook earlier this month.

Whoever is responsible for the attack they seem to have succeeded in damaging Facebook's already delicate privacy reputation, with Gawker reporting that groups such as, "I remember when Facebook WASN'T a porn site!" springing up left right and centre.

An attack such as this is the last thing Facebook needs right now,“It’s precisely this kind of problem which is likely to drive people away from the site,” wrote online security firm, Sophos' senior technology consultant Graham Cluley in a blog post. “Facebook needs to get a handle on this problem quickly, and prevent it from happening on such a scale again.” With Google's social network growing at a rapid pace, reporting their 3rd biggest week in new users last week, integrating 3rd party apps such as Hootsuite, and recently launching their Android music platform, Facebook can ill afford to let anything slip.

Friday, 11 November 2011

Facebook now have a new way of sorting your News Feed: most recent stories first. You can also continue to view highlighted stories first, followed by recent stories. If you don't have the updates to News Feed yet, you can expect to see them over the coming weeks as the rollout continues.

Google has launched Pages for brands and businesses, creating a new type of profile similar to Facebook Pages. Google+ Pages show a verified account symbol as well as a new, square icon, both at the top and on a ‘Share this page’ button on the left sidebar.

Twitter has begun the rollout, or at least a significant spot test, of the Activity and @Username streams it announced in mid-August. The @Username stream replaces the @Mentions and Retweets streams, combining those with stories about new followers, people favoriting your tweets, and more. The Activity stream shows the follows, favourites, and retweets of the people you follow.

Music discovery services such as Spotify, Rdio, Mog, Slacker and Earbits are attracting significantly more users since their integration with Facebook at F8. Since F8, people have shared their listening activity more than 1.5 billion times with their friends using the music apps that have integrated the Open Graph.

Friday, 4 November 2011

Twitter launched the first in a series of Twitter stories. You can read about a single Tweet that helped save a bookstore from going out of business; an athlete who took a hundred of his followers out to a crab dinner or a Japanese fishermen who use Twitter to sell their catch before returning to shore. You can tweet them your story on @twitterstories or use the #twitterstories.

Twitter is testing a new feature that highlights a link labeled as “top news” or a profile labeled “top people” at the top of its real-time search results. For a small percentage of users, searching for a topic such as “South Park” or a hashtag such as “#OWS” returns a link to a news story at the top of the page in addition to the usual relevant tweets.

Facebook’s music player and Discography apps, the last traces of the long-rumored but never-launched music dashboard, went silent this week. Instead, the social network is steering its users toward music services it has partnered with so far: Spotify, Rdio, and Mog.

Google is adding more Google+ features this week designed to increase user engagement and sharing. These include a YouTube slider that lets you watch and share YouTube videos with your Google+ friends and two new Google Chrome extensions for sharing webpages and tracking your Google+ notifications.